While the first part of this month’s list covered the most prominent cards to keep an eye on, there’s a surprising number of cards that at least bear consideration for Modern. Not that Midnight Hunt is the second coming of Eldraine, but this set has a plethora of decent to solid cards to evaluate. They might be niche, and they might be pet cards, but we have a lot of ground to cover, so let’s get to it.
Ten Cards Worthy of Mention
Temur Rec players say this is good, and Control players are excited about it. I play neither of those decks, but I can certainly get the excitement. While the front half is a mini, instant-speed Drawn from Dreams, the back half gives you the full Dig Through Time experience. With Wilderness Reclamation, you can flash this back as early as turn 6 while still holding up countermagic. Control will have to wait a little longer to get there, but it’s certainly not something that strategy minds doing.
No, it’s not a Thing in the Ice, but it checks all the boxes for “bad pet cards people will still jam in Modern.” It almost made my watch list part one for that reason alone, but I did want to keep the primary highlights on playable cards. Poor Smoldering Egg dies to Fatal Push, Prismatic Ending, Unholy Heat, and doesn’t have a super impactful transform effect like its blue cousin. Honestly, though, I could see this being in a spell-based Red Prison style deck as a potential finisher if you really wanted to play with Egg. Perhaps not good, but certainly great.
Once a classic sideboard card for Control, Timely Reinforcements might have finally met its superior. While Sunset Revelry doesn’t gain as much life or create as many tokens as Timely, it does offer you card draw. This card advantage is most likely what will push it to completely replace Timely as the sideboard card of choice. And for only two mana, the tradeoff between the two certainly seems worth it. Expect to see this getting flashed back with Snapcaster Mage a lot, especially with the recent return of Burn to the meta.
Unconditional white Doom Blade that also hits planeswalkers. I’m not sure how good this card will be, given how much better, more efficient white removal is in the format. Yes, hitting planeswalkers is good, but Unholy Heat has already pushed the majority of planeswalkers out of the format, and I’m not sure what decks would want this over Prismatic Ending, Path to Exile, or even Portable Hole. Perhaps, given how reticent Modern players have been to run Path these days, Absence will take Path’s place as the white removal of choice, since cracking the Clue to draw a card is extremely mana intensive for the fast, efficient decks like Murktide and Sagavan. However, it’s important to note that Absence’s mana cost is double Path’s, and that can really affect how mana efficient your own deck is. Decks like Hammertime won’t want to spend double on their Paths, and if other decks (like Control) have dropped Path because it gives the efficient Murktide and Ragavan decks extra mana, why would giving them extra card draw be okay?
Our first truly unconditional Doom Blade. Not restricted like Go For the Throat, Cast Down, or Power Word Kill, and not black-restricted like Victim of Night or Devour in Shadow. It’s not quite Terminate, but it’s much easier to cast for a wider range of decks than Terminate is, so it’ll certainly see play. I’ve heard rumblings that Death’s Shadow decks might want this, since they actively want the life loss, but I can’t see them playing this over Dismember, which lets them supercharge a Death’s Shadow for one mana and they can often pay the extra black when they need to conserve their life total. However, with Dress Down being the new Temur Battle Rage, perhaps switching to a less painful removal spell makes more sense, especially since Grasp can hit larger Murktides that Dismember will not.
The only reason Consuming Blob wasn’t on the primary list was its mana cost. A five-mana, self-replicating Tarmogoyf is probably Modern playable, at least as a one-of, like we’ve seen with Titania, Protector of Argoth in some Sagavan decks. Maybe some kind of green-based Control deck will want Blob, or perhaps a Mono-Green Devotion list will try to ramp into this. Who knows, maybe someone will break out their Doubling Seasons and go nuts.
Stealing your opponent’s cards is fun, and having the possibility to mess with their scrying draws Magic players like moths to a flame. However, if Siphon is good at all, it’s going to be super niche, and all the buzz I’ve seen surrounding this card for Modern has given off major “Twitch chat wants to board in Surgical Extraction” vibes. Yes, messing with the Dragon’s Rage Channeler surveils sounds like roguish fun. No, it’s not necessarily good. Will people try it anyways? Of course we will!
The two frontrunners people are expecting to utilize this card are Elves and Enchantress, but Rite doesn’t really do anything better than these decks’ current tools. Elves has Realmwalker, which only costs mana the first time you cast it and can become mana itself with Heritage Druid, and Enchantress has Rite’s effect on permanents like Sythis, Harvest’s Hand and Enchantress’s Presence. What I do think will happen is we’ll see some kind of creature-based Cheerios deck pop up, trying to exploit playsets of Memnite, Ornithopter, and perhaps Burning-Tree Emissary to build Storm for a Grapeshot kill. However, that’s a glass cannon for someone else to brew.
9. Sacred Fire
“Shock Helix” with flashback is super interesting, but that flashback cost is almost prohibitively expensive. I can’t see Burn sacrificing the third point of damage to potentially spend six mana to recast Shock, and Jeskai Control has Snapcaster, which means you might as well just play Lightning Helix instead. It’s way more mana efficient. Not needing a Snapcaster, however, might tip the scales since the flashback gives the deck extra virtual copies of Sacred Fire without eating up more card slots.
10. Can’t Stay Away
Modern already has Unearth, which costs one less and lets you cycle it when it’s not useful. Snapcaster Mage exists for decks that want Unearth with flashback. While Can’t Stay Away has flashback built in, I can’t see the hype people have for this card in Modern. Having your reanimated dork get exiled if it ever leaves the battlefield is a big cost, even if you got some value out of it initially, since it means your future Can’t Stay Aways will have less targets. Self-mill decks usually employ Stitcher’s Supplier, which gets hosed by Stay Away’s exile clause, as opposed to Unearth letting it keep its death trigger. Maybe I’m missing something, maybe it’s just all the cats in the artwork, but I don’t see this as being anything but Unearth for Standard, not Modern.
Parting Thoughts:
It’s astounding and impressive how many cards from a Standard set look like they’ll make some ripples if not waves in a post-MH2 Modern. And there are still several cards we haven’t discussed yet, some of which I’m saving for the final part because they relate to other sets we’re still catching up on. So I’ll see you all tomorrow for the last segment of the watch list, covering more MH2 and the overlooked gems of the Forgotten Realms set. (Update: Check out part 3.)
